The Sunday morning news. [volume] (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1886-1891, 1887-02-13
SILENT EARTHQUAKES
MANY HOUSES WRECKED BY sTNGU-
Lac UNDERGROUND UPHEATALS.

New Junction Railway The City
Built Partly on IA Crust Covering n
swamp Hundred Feet Deep.
The recent condemnation by Building
Inspector Larry Buckley of a number of
buildings in the neighborhood of the earth
works of the new junction Railway at the
foot of Hudson City Hill, brings into promi
hence remarkable earth phenomenon
that made the buildings unsafe. The new
junction Railway Company have for many
months been erecting trestle across the
meadows that lie between the old city and
the sections acquired by the consolidation
of 1871. It was noticed that the piles upon
which the trestles were to be built sank
deep into the ground, and that more length
of wood was demanded than the company
expected to supply. When the poles had
been driven and the trestles put up, an
army of dirt carts rolled up to them and
buried them with filling, making a solid
earth embankment twenty-five feet or SO
above the level of the surrounding streets
for the la ing of the tracks. One morning
when the workmen engaged on the work
returned to the scene of their labors they
discovered that the filing and the trestles
had sunk at one point ten feet or more. 1t
looked as though some monstrous weight
had fallen on the embankment and broken
its back The break was repaired with
more earth filing and the embankment re-
built A day or two days afterwards the
embankment had sank at the same spot
ten feet again. This experience has been
repeated indefinitely since that time. and
still the embankment built each day sinks
more or less during the night.
Not long after the falling of the embank
ment had been discovered, it was noticed
that the ground in the neighborhood be-
came swollen and mounds of various alt-
tudes appeared in neighboring places that
had before been fiat and level In some
instances these ground swellIngs appeared
two hundred feet away from the broken
embankment, and in one case, at least,
citizen who lived nearly three hundred feet
away from it, woke up in the morning to
find that during the night his back yard
had puffed up to the level of his back par
Tor windows Since that time several
houses in the vicinity have been raised
from their foundations by thee5 subterrs-
mean upheavals, and made SO dangerous
that the families living in them have been
forced to quit them.
The phenomenon was so singular and re-
m4rkable that a SUNDAY MORNING News
reporter was directed yesterday to investi-
gate it. On visiting the vicinity the re-
porter found q number Of laborers at work
upon the embankment of the head of First
and Merseles streets. The region is one
of tenement houses, not of the modern
sty le, nor of brick, but all of them wooden
structures, and many of them rookeries
hot ORC not for hnpan hahitnfion Ac
they walked along Merseles towards Sec
ond street, they observed that the board
fences had been torn and ripped by the
force of these remarkable upheavals. Mrs.
Kohler lives at the Second street corner, in
one of the better of the houses Hers is
three-story tenement and four families
had lived in it. The walls had been cracked
all through the house, and the ceilings
been loosened so that they fell. In the
cellar underneath the foundations had
been all unsettled. and the building rested
on heavy beams placed under it by house
movers to prevent the building from fall
ing to the ground.
s'We went to bed one night, she said
sand the house creaked, and rocked and
sagged so that we thought it was coming
wreDched out of place by the un-
even raising of the building,
fell on us while we slept. Even
this morning the doors were fixed so tight
in their jambs that we couldn't open them;
and when we tore them open they
wouldn't shut again. We had noticed the
cellar filling with water for q day or two.
When it had risen three or four feet, the
house WIS all out of plumb"
The reporter asked if any other houses
in the neighborhood were affected in the
same way.
"Their cellars are all full of water" was
the reply. tThat is the first sign of
wreck"
In the rear of lot adjoining Mrs. Kohl
er's, on Second street, is two-story and
half frame tenement. Front and rear on
the next lot beyond are three-story frame
tenement and a two-story building. On
the rear of the lot, yet beyond. there is an
other two-and-a half-story tenement. The
two houses on the rear ends of lots belong
to man named McDermott. The front
and rear buildings on one lot belong to
man named Bender. These houses have
all been boisted out of place and out of
plumb by the phenomenal land swells.
They were tenanted by many families, but
the Building Inspector has ordered them
out, and yesterday they were tenantless.
Across the street from these is line of six
or seven two-story tenements. None of
them is less than $50 feet from the rail
roads earth-works. The weather boar Is
of the corner house and the one next to it |
had been split into fragments by the over
night ground pnffs; and the whole line of |
buildings has been condemned. Two or !
three daring families, however, occupy the |
houses furthest away from the Company's |
filling. All the houses were shured up |
with great blocks but even with this pre- I
caution the houses were at least six inches |
out of plumb. and the westernmost houses |
seemed to he pressing down upon those |
them on the east The report
ers went through two or three of them. !
The corner house Was closed so as to keep I
everybody out. but the reporters were
shown the one next to il. Il had been |